Books in the Big Yellow Taxi
There is a short story I read once about how Canada didn’t have a lot of famous authors because it was a cold country. I don’t remember much else except that I a> read it as part of my coursework either in university OR high school; b> it was in an anthology of short stories; c> for years I thought it was by Stephen Leacock. I have poured through Leacock’s collections, quizzed my librarian friends and have even begged on social media for someone to help me remember what this story was from. So far, nothing.
But in that process, I realized how fickle the world can be. Stephen Leacock was a HUGELY famous in his time, widely regarded as the world’s best humourist who went on to inspire other famous people such as Groucho Marx. Today though, probably the only reason we know of him is because of the required reading of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in high school. While I wouldn’t say he’s completely disappeared from literary scene, I feel that Leacock is only known to a contemporary audience because of the requirement to take Canadian Literature classes in high school & university. It’s the same CanCon phenomenon that makes the CBC turn out fantastic shows like Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience. I’m not mad about it.
I was disappointed – but not surprised – by the ruling against The Internet Archive recently. I suppose eventually it may end up like Napster – too visionary for its time and replaced by the bottom-feeding capitalism of Spotify who is lauded for what Napster was condemned for doing. In fact, the new partnership with google probably signals that very thing, exactly as now google will have its finger in yet another piece of our collective pie.
Still, bright lights exist. Today, I loved reading Vanishing Culture: on the impact of forgotten books by Brad Bigalow. It turned me onto his Recovered Books project. I love that people are out there preserving history and culture by bringing old works to the surface again.
My friend Sara argues with me about modern books, preferring to read works that stand the test of time. Her perspective is that, “Time is a sieve, and it weeds out irrelevant works.” But not all art and culture needs to be relevant 100 years from now. They can be perfect for helping people navigate the here & now and still be worth engaging with! Conversely, I also agree with AJ Jacobs in his book Breaking Bread With the Dead that we shouldn’t throw out all historical works just because they don’t align with our modern sensibilities, instead we should engage with them, be challenged by them. No need to give up the modern invention of the shower NOR throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the internet asks, “Why not both?”
I was surprised to see the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in the Recovered Bookstore. I had this book as a child growing up in the 80s and it never occurred to me that it hadn’t really been a part of the modern bibliography, until now. But I guess it is the way of a lot of art and media: you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
PS: Incidentally, my friend Angela has been looking for a copy of Pump Up the Volume forever. She mentioned it was one of her fav movies of the 90s and wanted to rewatch it to see if it still held up. She mentioned that she couldn’t find it anywhere. I also tried to find it and noticed that it wasn’t anywhere: not on video websites, not on streaming services, not even on torrent sites! But low and behold – The Internet Archive has copy of it. HASHTAG BLESS.
Well in my day, sonny boy, we had this thing called RADIO…